Diamond Life

by Aliya S. King

  “Does it bother you?” Jake asked. He turned to let his back hit the headboard and then stretched his feet out on the bed.

  “Does what bother me?”

  “Knowing that I’m messing with other women. You think I’m betraying Kipenzi?”

  Ian looked at a spot on the wall, somewhere behind Jake’s head.

  “I only know that if you had met an untimely demise, Mrs. Giles would not have been having sex with other men in the bed she once shared with you.”

  “How come you never said anything?”

  “You didn’t ask my opinion.”

  The buzzer went off and Ian picked up the intercom phone.

  “Your driver is here,” Ian said, turning to leave.

  “You don’t have anything else to say?” Jake asked.

  “No,” said Ian, slipping into the room that used to be Kipenzi’s office and closing the door. As Jake filled his water bottle before leaving for the day, there was an audible click.

  “What does he need to lock the door for?” Jake mumbled under his breath.

  The same roads, to the same studio. To spit new lyrics to new beats. The same label. Jake thought about the Digital Underground song “Same Song.”

  And wasn’t it?

  Jake took the steps down two at a time to Studio B and ran into Dylan, who had her head down in paperwork as she charged up the stairs and walked directly into Jake.

  “Oooh, sorry, Jake,” Dylan said, leaning down to pick up the papers she dropped.

  “Who’s in here today?” Jake asked.

  “Zander’s in Studio A. His dad just left . . .”

  Dylan let her eyes drop to the floor for just a second. Jake wondered how much she knew about his falling-out with Z.

  “What else?”

  “Studio B’s all ready for you. I’ll be at the office if you need anything.”

  “Cool. Did you find Lily?”

  Dylan shook her head.

  “She doesn’t work at Peter Luger’s anymore. Samantha said she’s tending bar at a hotel downtown, but she didn’t know which one.”

  Jake nodded and turned to walk away.

  “Jake?”

  Jake turned but didn’t speak.

  “The tribute album?”

  Dylan cowered, as if she thought Jake would hit her for asking.

  “No,” Jake said. “I’m not doing it.”

  “Z’s on it,” Dylan whispered. “And just about everyone else who ever worked with Kipenzi . . .”

  “Cool. Then you don’t need me.”

  Jake went into Studio B and closed the door. Kipenzi would not have wanted a tribute album. Jake was sure of it. As the executor of her estate, he could have put a stop to it, but he knew her father would be crushed. He needed to push his child. Even in death, he had her working. She’d retired! Why didn’t people understand that? She didn’t want news stories, magazine covers, and music videos. And now, she was looming larger in the media than she ever did when she was alive.

  Jake played around with a few buttons on the mixing board, waiting for the engineer to arrive. Although the walls were practically 100 percent soundproof, he could hear a high note being hit somewhere in the distance. It was Mariah Carey–high. The kind of note that broke glass on those old Memorex commercials.

  Jake stuck his head out of the studio door and listened. The note was still being held. And the singer was having fun with it, moving the note around, scatting and adibbing. Jake followed the voice, peeking into rooms as he made his way down the hallway. Zander was in one room, sitting at a piano, alone, playing the same melody over and over.

  “Hey, Unc,” said Zander.

  Jake nodded and kept walking. In the last room, near the rear entrance to the studio, Jake heard it again. The angelic voice was laughing and hitting an even higher note than the first one he heard.

  Jake stood at the doorway and slowly lifted his head up to the glass window in the door. A young woman had her back to the door. She had one hand on her stomach and the other hand pressed into her ear. Jake drained the last of his drink and peered inside. Jake didn’t recognize the woman. But his eyes lingered on her ass, firm and tight. In tight jeans, he could see the outline of her body clearly, from her tiny waist to her slim thighs and the ankles both covered in gold anklets. He opened the door to the room and jumped when the young woman turned and he realized it was Bunny.

  “Yo,” he said, trying to maintain his composure. “I didn’t recognize you.” Jake made an awkward gesture to his head. “Your hair’s short.”

  Bunny gave Jake a wicked smile.

  “Do you like it? My manager hates it. But he said if you’re okay with it, he’d let it go.”

  Jake could hardly hear her. How did he not know that was Bunny? He’d signed her to the label just after Kipenzi’s death. And he’d been guiding her career as best as he could ever since. Every so often, she’d bring a few songs she worked on and he would yay or nay them. But she’d never actually registered on his radar as a woman. She was just Bunny Clifton, the girl from Jamaica with the charming accent and the immaculate voice. She was Zander’s girl. And that was about it as far as he was concerned.

  “It’s different,” Jake said. “You colored it or something too?”

  Bunny nodded.

  “That blond shit is so played,” Bunny said, rolling her eyes.

  Jake thought about his wife’s blond mane. Bunny sighed.

  “I want to do things my way. I’ll take everyone’s suggestions into consideration. But I need y’all to fucking trust me.”

  “Watch the mouth,” Jake said, pointing at Bunny and then sliding onto a fake leather sofa in the corner of the studio.

  “I’m eighteen years old. We curse sometimes. It’s normal.”

  “If you don’t rein it in now, you won’t be able to rein it in when you’re being interviewed by Seventeen. We don’t need you to get the bad-girl rep.”

  “Even if I deserve it?” Bunny asked, leveling her eyes at Jake.

  Jake opened his mouth, although he had no idea what he was about to say, just as Zander came into the studio.

  “I think I got it, Bunny,” Zander said, trotting over to the keyboard.

  “You think you got what, baby?” Bunny asked, still looking at Jake.

  “The melody. For the lyrics you wrote. Check it.”

  Zander put his head down and began playing the keyboard. An intricate melody, filled with those high notes Jake had heard Bunny practicing, filled the room. Bunny hummed at first, her eyes closed tight. Jake knew she could sing. The whole world knew she could. But this was something different. Bunny pursed her lips and started in with a few random ooohs and ahhhs.

  Instantly, Jake’s dick was hard. It was just a biological fact. He wasn’t happy about it, but there it was. He was half lying on the couch, the same one he’d screwed his first groupie on fifteen years ago, and he had to adjust himself to make sure this child didn’t see what she had done to him.

  She was a teenager. She was his artist. She was Zander’s girl. Jake put those three sentences on repeat in his head, hoping it would deflate him. Bunny launched into the lyrics of her song and turned to face Zander, giving Jake another view of her ass. He was not deflated. Just the opposite.

  Should he stand up, gesture to his watch, and get out of there? Stay still and think of something like how much he loved his wife, even in death? Take a chance and get up and get some water?

  Jake felt choppy and unnerved, as if he were controlling his body from somewhere else. And he wasn’t sure which lever moved which limb.

  “What do you think? Do we have something here?” Bunny asked Jake, turning around to face him.

  Yes. We have something here, Jake said to himself. We have a big fucking problem.

  Despite his allegiance to his wife, his common sense, and his sense of morality, Jake found himself drafting a text message to Bunny—and then quickly erasing it and moving on to the next task of the day. After a business meeting or a st
udio session, he’d find himself drafting again. Twenty times, he wrote out a text message to her number and then shook his head, knowing it was an insane thing to do.

  “HEY, YOU SOUNDED GOOD IN THE STUDIO TODAY. KEEP IT UP.

  “HEY, THE HAIR LOOKS GOOD. KEEP IT.

  “HEY, I’M GONNA JUMP ON THE REMIX TO THE SONG YOU WORKED ON TODAY.”

  No matter what he said, he sounded like a dirty old man. Partly because he was. Somehow, Bunny had turned off a commonsense switch inside of Jake. And after she turned it off, he felt like she ripped it out permanently. There would be no going back. He knew that immediately.

  When Kipenzi died, Jake had actually thought about killing himself. He dismissed that within the first week. Then the drinking started. And continued. And got out of control. And continued some more. And Jake walked through life in a buzzed haze. The alcohol helped him do whatever he wanted to do without thinking twice. And the alcohol told him it made all the sense in the world to text Bunny and ask a crazy question.

  “Why were you looking at me like that?” He typed out, feeling like a thirteen-year-old scribbling a note with checkboxes.

  Bunny responded immediately.

  “I think I felt something coming from you. Not sure what. Let’s talk about it later.”

  Just like that. No mind games. No fake doe-eyed innocence. No who-me? bullshit. She felt what he felt and she told him so without hesitation. She sent him another text message, simply asking where to meet. He gave her the room number of one of the penthouses at the W Hotel in Union Square and then told her where she could pick up a key.

  She was already there when he arrived. Naked, on the bed, hands behind her head.

  “Please don’t say anything to me,” Bunny said, spreading her legs wide. “Let’s do this first. Then we can talk.”

  Bunny was thinner than any woman Jake had ever been with. Kipenzi’s thick thighs and full breasts were still imprinted in his mind and his body. He remembered exactly how he had to hold her to mold them both together. And it didn’t work with Bunny. One of his arms went entirely around her waist and looped around her stomach. She was a slippery, tiny eel, moving easily into complicated positions that made sure Jake was hitting her exactly where she needed him to. She moved to her side, sliding Jake back inside her with her hand. She didn’t moan or make any noises. Her breathing was shallow and smooth. She sounded like she could have been doing yoga poses or writing a poem. Jake came inside of her. Wearing protection hadn’t even dawned on him until after they were a sweaty, entwined mess, tangled in the W’s fabled fluffy bedding.

  When Jake recovered, he sobered up immediately. He jumped up from the bed and pulled on his boxers and then his jeans.

  “This never happened,” said Jake.

  Bunny smiled.

  “Oh, but it did.” Bunny closed her eyes and spread her arms out wide. “It definitely did.”

  Jake stood at the mirror over the bureau, adjusted his hat, and then rubbed his beard. Over the past year, he’d bed-hopped nonstop. But now he had to admit that things were officially out of control. Bunny Clifton was an artist signed to his label and the girlfriend of a young man he considered his nephew. He’d gone from being trifling to just plain foul.

  “This is never going to happen again,” Jake said to Bunny.

  “Yeah, it will,” said Bunny. She rolled over and dressed quietly.

  “No. It won’t.”

  “I love Zander,” said Bunny. “And what happened today doesn’t change that. But there’s something here. I’m not going to try to define it, excuse it, or explain it. It’s hella messy. But it is what it is. And it’s not over.”

  Jake reached for his water bottle on the nightstand. It was empty. He groaned inwardly and sat back down on the bed.

  Bunny moved to the minibar and yanked it open.

  “From what I can smell, vodka’s your drink of choice,” she said, tossing a mini-bottle from across the room. Jake opened it while staring at Bunny and finished it in two swallows.

  “You need to switch to something else,” Bunny said, fluffing up her super-short haircut in the mirror.

  “Why?”

  Bunny picked up her purse and walked to the door.

  “Maybe you’d last a little longer.”

  Bunny let the door slam behind her. Jake considered her words. Then he burped, waved the smell away from his face, laid back on the bed, and stared at the door.

  So where are you from originally?” asked the man with the too-small feet.

  “Born and raised here in New York,” Lily lied.

  She’d planned to go on this date and be rigorously honest. But then she took a look at the man’s tiny feet, encased in a pair of sad, dusty penny loafers, and she changed her mind. She would say just enough to be sociable, skip dessert, and hopefully get home in time for Jeopardy.

  “I’m from Dallas. You ever been?”

  Lily peered at her menu.

  “I think once,” she said, not looking up.

  “Look, if you’d rather be somewhere else, we can end this early.”

  Lily looked up at Shawn and then put her head in her hands.

  “Shawn, I am so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You want to go?”

  Lily sat up straight in her seat. Shawn looked at her directly and waited for an answer.

  “No, I don’t want to go,” said Lily. “I want to have dinner with you.” She lightly tapped her fist on the table. “We are going to exchange awkward jokes and tell funny family stories and then I’m going to wonder if you’re ever going to call me again.”

  Shawn smiled. And Lily noticed that he had two deep dimples. So what his feet were too small? He had a beautiful smile, he was clean, and had dimples, for God’s sake. Two of ’em.

  After an hour and three glasses of wine, Lily felt her shoulders relaxing. She was laughing more and had slipped out of her shoes under the table. Shawn put his hands on top of Lily’s.

  “Do you feel more comfortable now?” Shawn asked. He looked so sincere that Lily had to look away.

  “I do. Thank you.”

  “Are you ready to talk about—”

  “No, I’m not,” Lily answered quickly. She tried to move her hands away, but Shawn held them tighter.

  “You know Corinne told me.”

  Lily swallowed hard and nodded, keeping her eyes in her lap. She was wearing her favorite dress: a wool wraparound with a self-tie that she’d gotten on sale at Anthropologie for forty bucks. It had flowers embroidered all over the hem, and she kept her head down, counting the flowers repeatedly while Shawn held her hand tight.

  “Lily, we have to talk about it. I mean, we don’t have to. But we should at least acknowledge it so we can move on.”

  Lily’s breath was coming in shallow, and she felt sweaty and shaky. She had never discussed her former self with any man except her doctor and her father. She’d never even dreamed about how she would discuss it with a man she might be interested in. When Corinne told her about Shawn, whom she’d met at a conference for addiction counselors, Lily blew her off. But Corinne continued to bug Lily about going out with him. Finally, one day Lily blurted out that if Corinne told Shawn the truth about her, and he was okay with it, she would go out with him. Two days later, she got a text message from Corinne: “I told him. He’s fine with it. I gave him your number.” Lily read the text and had to steady herself on the back of her sofa to keep from keeling over. A straight man who was okay with someone like her? Nope, she couldn’t believe it. And now she was sitting across from Shawn, who was holding her hands tightly and asking her to talk about it.

  Lily tugged, but Shawn wouldn’t let go of her hands and he didn’t stop looking at her directly.

  “So what exactly did Corinne tell you?” Lily whispered.

  “That you were born a boy.”

  Lily peeked up at Shawn.

  “And?”

  “Is there more? Are you an alien too?”

  “Would you be okay with th
at?”

  Shawn laughed.

  “That’s a stretch.”

  Lily bit her lip and held in a smile.

  “I would really like to see you smile. Without covering up your face with your hand,” Shawn said.

  Lily looked up and beamed.

  “You are beautiful.”

  Lily sunk lower into her chair and felt a warmth spreading across her face.

  “Thank you, Shawn.”

  Shawn finally let go of her hands and she folded them into her lap. Suddenly she had no idea what to do with them. She was so flustered and confused that she could barely remember what her hands were used for.

  “So when did you know?” Shawn asked.

  Lily picked up her wineglass and took a gulp.

  “I was probably four. Maybe five.”

  “And when did you know you were going to do something about it?”

  “As soon as I found out on the internet that I could.”

  “Can I say something really crass without you thinking I’m a jerk?”

  “Take a chance.”

  “I don’t care where you got them from, you have the best rack I have ever seen in my entire life.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  Shawn peered closer at Lily.

  “There is no way in the world I would have ever thought you were—”

  “Shawn,” Lily said, leaning away from him. “You’re sort of creeping me out now.”

  “I mean, I work with people in recovery with different addictions and I’ve treated a number of trannies, so I—”

  “Did you just say trannies?” Lily asked.

  “Is that politically incorrect?” said Shawn.

  Lily sighed.

  “Can we just change the subject?”

  Shawn gave Lily a look of irritation and then seemed to catch himself.

  “Now it’s my turn to apologize,” he said. “I got a little carried away.”

  “I just want to make sure you’re getting to know me as a person and not as a fetish,” said Lily.

  “Does this mean I’m supposed to pretend like I don’t want to have sex with you?”

  Lily choked on her wine and coughed so hard that a waiter came over and patted her on the back. Lily patted her mouth with her white cloth napkin and thanked the waiter.